


Esse Basiorum

by Aloysia_Virgata



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloysia_Virgata/pseuds/Aloysia_Virgata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you have time, can you write a fic about sometime in mulder and scully’s relationship that she begins to be okay with PDA? Would they kiss in the park? Getting groceries? At a restaurant? In front of skinner or her family? Really interested in the nuances of their relationship we never got and doesn’t seem like we’ll ever get to see :( so please write a little something or somethings? thank you mrs. virgata!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Esse Basiorum

She remembers the first time in the wild, without the New Year as a convenient excuse. They met at a tiny Mexican place in Georgetown after work, washing down the carnitas and sopapillas with good conversation. Scully was dazzled by the $162 billion Time-Warner AOL merger. The scope of it seemed unreal to her, toy money that existed only as blips in software. They split the check and headed for the door, Mulder pocketing a handful of mints from the bowl by the cash register. He kissed her firmly on the mouth before heading into the night, a plastic bag crinkling in his hand. Scully slouched against the wall, her lips hot with chilies and surprise.

She went home and then went to work in the morning. They didn’t talk about it, but Mulder had an air of being pleased with himself. He’d brought them leftovers for lunch.

*

Maggie invited him for Easter because he seemed like a sad dog in the rain that would sit and soak himself without looking for shelter.

“Mom, really, it isn’t necessary,” Scully said. But her mother insisted and won, so there was Mulder next to her with a box of cake from Whole Foods and a bottle of the red they liked on weekends.

There were a few freckled cousins that Scully still thought of as drooling babies. The seventeen year old was making eyes at Mulder while Bill held forth on George W. Bush.

Scully bit her tongue and ignored the conversation as best she could.

“…put an end to this socialist garbage,” Bill said, and Scully ground her teeth but said nothing. She would not do this to her mother.

“Good girl,” Mulder whispered into her ear, and kissed the top of it.

Maggie saw and Scully found that she did not care.

*

Scully sat on the dryer at the laundromat while he fed quarters into it. She was reading an article on the uses of maggots in forensic toxicology, occasionally highlighting the text. Mulder, fidgety in jeans and a t-shirt, vied for her attention.

He produced a tennis ball and tossed it. “Catch,” said, as it bounced off the wall behind her head.

She looked up and glared over her glasses. “You said you wanted company, Mulder. Not a playdate.”

He retrieved the ball, rolling it between his palms. “But I like to play with you. You’re my favorite toy.” He threw the ball again and this time it landed in the space between her crossed legs. “Swoosh!” he exclaimed. “Nothing but net.”

She sighed and closed the folder, setting it next to her. “Come here,” she said, and uncrossed her legs.

Mulder approached, looking wary. “Is this going to hurt?”

She rolled her eyes, gesturing impatiently.  Mulder stood between her knees, looking down at her with that wondering expression he often reserved for ectoplasm and Bigfoot spoor. Scully put her arms about his waist. “Mulder,” she said, gazing upwards. “You are a nuisance.”

He shrugged, defenseless and unperturbed.

She crooked a come-hither finger at him, beckoning him down to her level. His cheeks were scratchy under her hands when she held his face. “I want you to go to the deli on the corner. Turkey with shredded lettuce and tomato on rye. Yellow mustard, no mayo. Diet Coke. An orange.”

He nodded, solemn.

Scully kissed him, tasting spearmint Tic-Tacs and Red Bull. She was shy about this still, kissing her partner in the laundromat like a pair of college kids. Mulder pulled away eventually, saluting as he headed for the door. She leaned left to maximize her view of his ass in those jeans and, once more, realized no one could blame her.

*

They’d been sneaking kisses in the office lately, Scully’s resolve wearing thin in the face of ever-compounding tragedy. She knew what people said, she knew how she and Mulder looked. She cared and she didn’t care. Mulder was jauntier these days, semi-regular sex putting a spring in both their steps and she quit trying to cover it. She could still glare her way out of excessive attention.

That morning, though. Her blue shirt rumpled, hair a curling cap about her ears. She saw a shift in Skinner’s eyes, a confirmation, and she tipped her chin higher because she was not ashamed. Fierce protectiveness in her voice for Mulder, newly orphaned.

Mulder stood beside her in the morning light, his eyes and his shirt the same tuneless gray. She wanted Skinner gone, she wanted this case gone, she wanted Mulder to build clean scars if he could not fully heal. But he couldn’t leave a little girl behind, her love, so she would come along for triage.

Three flights, she told her boss. Two hotel rooms.

Skinner looked away first.

*

Whole Foods on I Street. Scully was blissed out in the cheese department, fascinated by the range of carefully rotting milk. Mulder made faces at a small girl at the fish counter, using his hands as makeshift gills. He sucked his cheeks in, lips pouted. Scully watched him from the corner of her eye, hungry.

She put Boston lettuce in the cart because it was prettier than romaine, and a bunch of whole beets because they made her feel ambitious. Mulder ambled over, carrying a loaf of olive bread and a jar of cornichons.

“I feel dumb here,” he confessed, putting things in the cart. “Like if I ask a question about, I don’t know, the different kind of tomatoes the employees will point and laugh.”

“Do you have a question about the tomatoes?” she asked. “You don’t even like them.”

Mulder waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not the point.”

She grinned, picked up a box of Agave Sweetened Ancient Maize Breakfast Morsels. “It’s definitely the point.”

Mulder snatched it from her. “See, this, this right here, this is what I’m talking about. That’s a box of Frosted Flakes, Scully. That is the yuppie version of Tony the Tiger and you know it.”

“Mulder, give me the cereal.”

“Say it’s Frosted Flakes.” He held it nearly three feet above her head.

The little girl from the fish department was laughing and Mulder gave her thumbs up.

Scully, delighted, stuck her tongue out.

“Don’t stick it out unless you plan to use it, "Mulder said, so she grabbed his shirt and hauled him down for a kiss.

"Ew,” squealed the girl, covering her eyes.

“Boys are so gross,” Scully said into the heat of his mouth, and put her cereal into the cart.


End file.
